Far Cry 3 Devs: Elder Scrolls, Rockstar Games Were Inspiration

For the most part, the single-player campaign of a first-person shooter is a mostly linear experience.

But don't tell that to the team at Ubisoft, who constructed the engaging open world found in Far Cry 2 . And with the third entry slated to arrive on December 4, fans can expect an even bigger and more immersive environment.

In speaking at the Eurogamer Expo , FC3 lead designer Jamie Keen said his team took "huge inspiration" from the vaunted Elder Scrolls franchise, which, as all the RPG fanatics know, feature gigantic landscapes. Said Keen:

We’ve had to take a little bit of a different approach to most shooters. In order to keep a player engaged over a period of time, there are certain other genres we have to look into to keep that engagement. So we’ve been looking at things like MMOs and other open world titles. The Elder Scrolls series is a huge inspiration for us along with games like Red Dead [Redemption] and other Rockstar games."

And because it's such a big world, you're going to come across quite a few different enemies and NPCs and in fact, Keen said there will be over 250 "encounter types" in Far Cry 3 . That's wicked cool because we're all so used to rapidly becoming familiar with a certain enemy and then exploiting his weakness over and over again. Finished Keen:

"We don’t want you to feel like, ‘Oh, it’s this encounter again. I’ve seen this one’. You know, ‘Arrow to the knee,’ for example. While it’s actually quite cool, we don’t necessarily want that. You end up with this real feeling of diversity of things going on. And you will see the same encounter again, but hopefully there’s enough of them that you won’t remember it, probably."

Far Cry 3 should be the last amazing game of 2012. And yes, we're convinced it'll be amazing.

Related Game(s): Far Cry 3

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